EP 82: How to Scout a New Area With Jason Carter and Adam Bronson. In this episode we talk about how to start from square one in a unit and find areas to hunt. When you go somewhere new what do you look for? What kinds of areas will hold animals? We also talk mapping and GPS. This is a great episode for this time of year as we all start hitting the hills.
Disclaimer: this text was produced through an automated transcription service and likely contains errors. Please listen to the original audio for exact content.
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We know what the ruts gonna bring. We know where the migration’s gonna happen. We know our glassing knobs
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Because those bucks are in the pattern. They’re in velvet. We’re just barely coming out of velvet by the Muzz or season
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Anything to do with Western Big Games.
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Welcome
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To the Epic Outdoors Podcast, powered by Under Armour.
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How’s everybody doing today? It’s Jason Carter and Adam Bronson here at the Epic Outdoors Office sitting here with Chris Peterson. Of course, we never give him a mic because he might talk about us. So anyway, we get to talk about him and he can’t talk back. So Adam and I are sitting here. We’ve had quite a few requests the last few days, actually the last few weeks, as people are starting to prepare for their hunts on how do you go about hunting new units? How do you go about scouting, what to do, when to do it, and what gear to use and whatnot. So anyway, we’re gonna crush that today. Before we get started, we do wanna thank Under Armour. They make great gear. We’ll talk about that a little bit later. They do sponsor our podcast as well as some things we’re doing here in the magazine and other asset facets of our business. So anyway, we do, we do appreciate them.
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Also, like to give a shout out to another one of our advertisers and sponsors. Red Rock Precision make awesome long range rifles for all, all different types of uses. They’ve got ultralight, sheep rifles, mountain rifles, extreme range. You know, if you’re, if weight’s an option, they can trim that down. If it’s not, you want just the best shooting gun that you can best scope set up, they can set that up versatile in all calibers. Great guys, Todd and Kurt, they’re at Red Rock Precision. So give them a call or visit ’em [email protected]. If you’re looking at upgrading what you have or adding to your arsenal with a great long range rifle, it’s getting kind of bleak for a lot of draws being done this last week. It seems like a lot of hopes and dreams are shattered for some of these remaining states. Not a whole lot left, but if you’re still wanting to keep, I guess, the slim dream alive of winning some something great, the Wyoming Super tag is an option for you until July 2nd. They sell their tickets online. They’re for every big game species, you know, sheep, moose, goat, deer, elk, you know, bison, antelope, all those. They give one tag each for those species entries are $10 each, or they give a trifecta away for $30 a piece per try, which allows you to choose any three species you want. So, another way to apply, get your name in the hat for something else. Dream big, so to speak. Again, the deadline to apply is July 2nd. Go online at wd.wyo.gov/epic outdoors and buy your tickets to that.
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Right on. Well, let’s see, when you were talking about that trifecta, I guess a guy could choose deer, elk, and antelope, or he could choose sheep, goat, or moose, maybe
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Black bear and wolf and antelope. How’s that?
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Alright, so I’ll
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Bet that’s never been done before.
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No, I’ll bet it’s never been done nor ever will be done since
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Two of the three of those are general tags, but never mountain lion. Maybe. Maybe
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You never know, but nevertheless, it’s an option that’s just, I want my freedom. That’s what people
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That wants the predator package pick all three of those no grizzly bears. I wanna make that disclaimer. Di grizzly bears are not allowed in the rif. Hey,
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But it looks like grizzlies are gonna be available to apply for coming up here shortly.
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So stay tuned. We’ll talk about that here in a few days or next week perhaps. Might
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Even see an email from Epic Outdoors talking about it today.
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We just wanted to go through a little bit about how you start. Not all units are created equal, and not all species require the same preparation and scouting for them. You know, elk versus deer versus antelope versus sheep mo goat. So we realize we may not cover every single niche and every single species and every single scenario, but we’re gonna dive into that a little bit in terms of where do you start? Best ways of doing, best ways of doing, researching a unit, maybe if you can go do scouting versus if you live too far away and it’s just not practical and you got time to only go show up and do the hunt. So
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Yeah, so this isn’t a podcast. We’re not telling you that you should hire a guy necessarily. This is for everybody and, and mainly the d i y guys. A lot of guys that are gonna be going guided generally, you know, don’t need to get as much information and really go over everything because their guides are making a lot of the decisions for ’em with their experience and that’s why you’re hiring guys. So anyway, the first kind of thing, Adam, we, you know, and obviously we both work side by side offices and we’re dealing with hundreds and hundreds of guys every year. But you know, the main thing is to get your paper maps. The first thing to do is get your paper maps. And so we do go generally go to my topo.com and you can, they’ll, they’ll sell you the maps. You can click on Nevada or Colorado and click on a specific unit. It’s a one to 100,000 series, very broad overview. And generally speaking, that’s enough. Yeah. But get the, get those maps and then, and then, and then give us a call. And if we’ve hunted there, we’ll definitely start to help you. And, and of course we can help you find other members within Epic Outdoors that have had experience in that same unit. But, but the first key is to get those
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Maps. Yeah, definitely. And, and a lot of units, like Jason said, a one to 100,000 scale that shows land ownership and all that is probably what you’re gonna need. Now if you are going in, say the back country or somewhere that you’re gonna be on foot and you’re hiking trails and you’re using landmarks and all that, definitely might look at the custom map feature in the one to 24,000 scale series there. You can make it how you want it, make it in the datum you want it and
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Rolled or
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Folded, rolled or folded, all you know, sizes, you know, all up at landscape portrait, all that. Those are something you maybe use on a sheep hunt or a goat hunt or a back country mule deer hunt where you need more detail for the actual basins and canyons you’re looking at and things like that. And then, like you said, I mean, there’s initial calls that you can kinda get the ball rolling on your research, but when you really start wanting to sit down and call people on an epic member experience list, or maybe you’re gonna call the game and fish biologists and things like that. Having been ex having had experience as a, as a D W R biologist myself, the tendency is for myself or others that you, they’re gonna help people that have done a little bit more preparation on their own and, and are, are, they’re obvious as they’re asking the questions.
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They’ve done some homework in terms of the unit, in terms of the layout of it, maybe study some of the general canyons, the access points and things like that. Highly recommend getting a little bit familiar through the map through Google Earth or whatever prior to you making some of those calls to biologists and game and fish. Because if you’re just simply calling up, expect them to tell you, where do I go kill the biggest Buck Bull? They get that call all the time. And I don’t know, it’s gonna be pretty hard to just throw out, you know, something that’s gonna mean something. But if you have leading questions, you know, you know, if it’s a later season deer hunt, where do the deer tend to gravitate to my time of year? You know, if it doesn’t snow and I don’t get weather, should I go higher?
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You know, all those types of leading questions have some of those written out and thought out prior to calling or call into your epic member experience, guys, because you can pick up on that vibe and, and Jason and I talk to guys every day, all day here at the office and we, we notice when guys have done a lot more of their homework and, and, and it’s just a lot easier, you can get to a little bit different layer of information versus somebody that’s just asking for, Hey, you know, where do I kill the biggest buck in unit 16 or biggest bull in 16 D in New Mexico? Or the biggest buck in 2 31 in Nevada has such a broad, general question. You can’t even, you can’t even start to answer.
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But I think, like you said, Adam doing, doing a huge amount of, and we call it huge, but, but really familiarizing yourself and, and doing a little bit of research prying to talking to these guys. You’re gonna do yourself a huge favor. All of us. If somebody calls me and says, Hey, what do you think about this area and what do you think about this area? And this is kind of what I’m thinking, what I’m seeing you realize that that guy’s vested invested already. He’s really serious about it and I’m kind of more have more of a tendency to help that guy. And it’s just a subconscious thing. It’s not, it’s not that I think somebody’s earned it more than another, it’s just, wow, this guy’s getting serious. Yeah, he really does want a big deal. He is not just gonna be happy with anything. And and he’s, he’s thinking, yeah, he’s, he’s willing to process the information that I’m gonna give him. And biologists are no different. They’re saying, you know, like a guy calls you about when you were the sheet biologist, if he had some initial thoughts going through his head and, and he had studied some of the maps, he’s like, well, what do you know about this ridge? What do you know about this draw? You’re like, alright, I’ll sit down and visit with this guy. Yeah, give him a little bit.
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Yeah, it, it, it’s, it’s just a natural tendency to do that. But somebody that just calls and asks a blanket statement and said, Hey, where’s all the, the 3 75 bulls on Mount Dutton? How, how do you answer that? They are where you find them and we’re, what’s your next question?
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You might need a horse. Yeah. Like, let’s really talk about what you, you want on this top.
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Talk about drainages, talk about, hey, I’m, I’m a I I don’t have horses. I’m going self-guided. What are areas that I could maybe hunt on a day hunt basis and not bite off more than I can chew or, you know, whatever the situation is. Or, Hey, you know, I’m gonna stay in a town and motel, you know, what are areas like that? I don’t, I don’t, I’m coming from a long ways away. I I don’t wanna bite off more than a couple mile hikes a day, things like that. Anything you can do to kind of have a series of questions that, that probably characterizes your hunting style. And then also gleaning information from them about, you know, more general ask leading questions about water sources. If it’s an earlier season, deer or an elk hunt, obviously in a dry year, like some of some of Utah Nevada Avenue, that’s gonna be an issue. You know, if what parts of the unit tend to be drier and don’t have water or dry up or, and other places that tend to be, you know, anything that might be unique to the specific year. You know, you know,
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Kind of to pigtail off of that same idea with the water situation, you know, I’ve used some of my maps in, in New Mexico as well as Arizona. And if you get the one in 24,000, you can actually see ponds. There’s a lot of these maps that’ll show ponds Yeah. Windmills and different things. So the one to 100,000, they’re great for springs. They show the basic
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Springs, the biggest springs. The biggest springs,
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Yeah, the biggest springs. The one in 24,000. Now I’m seeing ponds and I found a lot of ponds on the Arizona and New Mexico. And then and ponds mean water, you know, half of ’em or a third of ’em or whatever, some are dry, but check the ponds. You go to the ponds elk, especially elk and deer, they need water and you’re gonna see sign. And so now you’re setting up trail cameras, and of course you gotta deal with truck camera laws, especially in Nevada now. But that gives you a starting point. The elk like to water the, the cows, when the bulls come in with the cows, they’re running ’em around. There’s a lot of activity and cows water and bulls follow cows. And so there’s just a lot that goes into that, that process. Now, if you’re just hunting like Adam, like we, you were talking depending on the season you’re hunting a late season Colorado hunt or something.
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Yeah. Third season rifle or whatever. One, 100,000 is just fine. You’re not needing to know water. I don’t care about water. It means nothing to me. Those who knows when those deer are gonna water, if they water, depending on snow on the ground and whatnot in the, in the temperature of the day. And so, and, and, and in a lot of cases there’s streams and, and whatnot. And, and you’ll find that on some of these maps as well. But just to kind of pigtail off that, I don’t want to spend too much time on the maps, but you know, guys did visit about Google Earth a little bit. Yeah. And, and we can talk about that.
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It’s a very good tool this day and age for a lot of you, perhaps you live more than a day’s drive away from some of these Western states that you may draw a tag in. If you live in one of the western states, you know, a lot of ’em are within a day’s drive of you and you can get to them. But for some of you on the west coast or Midwest or, or East coast and you’re a do it yourself hunter, we realize that’s, that’s how you gonna have to play the game. Cyber scouting, you know, to Google Earth making some of these calls that we’re talking about. It’s a very useful tool there. The imagery, it just continually gets updated on Google Earth. You know, we can look at burns, you can look at a lot of different things of how it looks on the ground.
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And if you use, the more you use it, the more you’re familiar you’ll get with interpreting the lay of the land. The way, the way things look in real life and things like that. It’s a little bit different if you first getting on there to look at, train your eye to what you’re looking at. But you can pan and tilt and do a bunch of different things. Great tool there. You can put pins on there, you can import your own g p s coordinates to it. If you find a camp spot in a ridge, blah, blah, blah. Or if you, if you have places from other people that they’ve given you, Hey, I camped here certain, certain place. That’s right. It’s a great tool to use, especially if you, you know, everybody wants to see their unit. We talk to people this time of year all the time.
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They’re just wanting to go out for, even if it’s a Colorado third season deer hunt, they’re wanting to just try to get out there if they can, just to see what it looks like. We’re the same way we, we like, there’s just some a level of uncertainty that gets wiped away once you go and see your union, you say, okay, now I know what I’m dealing with. I’ve got the lay of the land. I maybe you see things through your eyes and hey, that I kinda like the looks of this country over here. That’s right. I don’t like the looks of this over here. It doesn’t look as dear or elke or that’s right. Or whatever like that.
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And, and to kind of pigtail off of that, again, you know, we’ve used Google Earth a lot for the trail system. You can see trails on Google Earth, you can see guzzler. So you might have an idea of where you think a guzzler is in some of these states. Produce a, a guzzler map and then you can actually go and if I got the basic area, I can go pinpoint that on Google Earth and see that guzzler. And now obviously you can’t see the water within the guzzler that’s probably coming in the next few years. But you could go and check and see if it’s dry or whatnot. And, and so it just kind of gives you that overview. We use Google Earth, it’s a definite great tool. We even have the app on our phone and, and a lot of times in the hills midday, you know, and we’ve done a podcast about this earlier, but you, you never quit thinking things are, you know, when things are slow and you’re at the camp trailer, you’re at the camp or whatever, you can, you, you know, if you’ve got three G or four G or l t e or whatever you’ve got, you can kind of open up that Google Earth and it might, something might trigger something.
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You’re having a tough go in the middle of the season. We would get on Google Earth and say, oh, I didn’t even realize there, this is a chaining over here. There’s a chaining. Maybe this box moved from this chaining to that chaining with pressure and all the pressure we’re putting on him and stuff. And so we use Google Earth in a lot of different ways, but it’s not an end all be all. It’s, it’s just a tool You can’t see bitter brush and, and and, and the health of the bitter brush and things like that. You’ve gotta see that with your own eyes. But it does give you that basic, broad overview. That’s
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Right. Big picture stuff and stuff you can key in on burns, you know, open areas, glassing points, saddles, ridges, you know, anything like that. Water sources, occasionally,
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Little old two trackers you didn’t know were there. Yeah.
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Yep. Low logging roads. Yep. Things like that. So, so then I guess it comes down to, all right, you think you’re gonna go maybe set foot, should we dive into that? If you think you’re gonna actually go set foot in your unit, you know, if that’s some, let’s go scout questions about that, you know, scouting a brand new area versus a an area you’ve been in the past. Now generally, if I’m going to a unit that I’ve been in the past, I don’t, I don’t normally go to the areas I already know. I usually, if I have some history there and I know, hey, there’s usually always some deer, elk or whatever in this country, I’m always trying to add to that by finding a plan B, c, and D option. Another question we also get is, you know, if I start scouting then for mule deer or elk, when do some of these deer elk patterns start to change?
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And if I’m going there in July or early August, if my, what can I plan on? If I see something I like, what can I plan on if my hunt’s, you know, in August or in September, it fits in October, November. And maybe I’ll just address the, the elk a little bit and then Jason can talk a little bit about the deer. But when it comes to elk, our experience has been, yeah, I mean, right now from, from June and July, these bulls are in a definite pattern of, of just feeding. I mean, they’re feeding bedding, they’re in their summer patterns, putting on
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Inches,
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And that’s all they’re doing, that’s all they’re concerned about is Eaton. They’re the fastest growing antlers of, of any, any deer in the deer family. So they’re, that’s all they’re concerned with right now. Long about the 20th to 25th of August. Those of us that have run trail cameras on water sources and things like that is when you start to see bulls start to get muddy a little bit. And so some of the states like Utah, that has an early archery season that opens the 15th to 20th, there’s a window a time you can hunt your bulls right off the bat where they’ve been living other places. Most every other places. That’s not the case. And I dunno, in my experience, about 50% of the bulls or more sometimes completely leave the area that they’ve been simmering, just completely leave. Even though there’s cow and cal herds there, you think they just move into the nearest cow cal herd.
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But elk just don’t do that. They’re roamers and they can roam long distances, 20, 30 miles. Sometimes you look at units like Southwest des Southwest Desert where mountain ranges have a 10 mile open valley between some of them and they cross ’em and they’re, they’re never to be seen again. You think you find a bull all summer long, don’t count on ’em. If you’ve got an early rifle hunt, don’t count on hunting that bull. You might, he might stay in that range, but he might not. So for elk, that end of August time period is when everything starts to change. Early August, sometimes maybe in or late August, early September. Deer maybe a little bit later near. Yeah. But I’ll let you talk about deer.
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Well, yeah, and I will, I want jump into that, but I do, I really like what you said there as far as August, that 25th timeframe, we watched Bull, we killed Joshua. We actually tracked him down and watched him leave his summer area August 25th. And so some of these seasons do, do get into that just, you know, 20th, maybe they open around the 20th, 23rd, something like that. And so we have guys meet even the 19th some years, and we have guys, you know, saying, do I put a bunch of time into Prec scout and elk and then kill ’em right off the bat? Well, yeah, ideally
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If you have that ability yes. Work
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Out. Yeah. But what generally you will not see these 400 inch bulls and, and let’s just call ’em three 70 plus whatever. You will not see these big bulls die early. They generally die when they move in with the cows. And so all that scouting is just kind of, I mean, it’s not wasted, but it, you’re learning country, you’re learning trails. You’re, you’re in there, you’re, you’re knowing where the cows are, but these bulls will move and they, like you said Adam, they move along the
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Real, real scouting for elk, if you have an archery hunt that starts September 15th is really that 10 days right before the hunt. That’s right.
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As they move in with the cows. And we’re seeing in Nevada and some of these country, we’ll see three 80 bulls standing with cows as early as September 1st. And so anyway, and, and you know, we’ve hunted New Mexico quite a bit and those bulls will be rutten September 5th, September 7th. And so anyway, but there again, sometimes you don’t have the movements, but a lot of times you do. And that’s what we’re finding. So I like that. I think we covered that. Well, obviously we’ve got a, you know, we’ve got late season elk hunts that happen and they’re moving, and that’s a whole different subject. And, and we could probably tee back into that a little bit later as far as deer and Adam, you’ve hunted a lot of deer as well, but they, the, you know, these, the deer hunts. I mean, when you prec scouting is for early season, you know, heavy pres, scouting, trail cameras, all of that kind of thing is for early season, you’re gonna really get the most use out of it.
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Now all scouting is good. Scout everywhere all the time, that’s best. But generally speaking, the most bang for your buck is gonna be that early season scouting for those early hunts. And, and like Adam, we’ve hunted, I don’t know how many we listed ’em off when we did a Colorado podcast last year, you know, maybe it was 30 or 40 different units, or it feels like 30 or 40, maybe it was only 25 or something. But we’ve had to learn those from scratch. Yeah. And they were third seasons generally, second thirds never hardly ever in archery or month. No,
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That’s right. So it’s unlike maybe Utah or Nevada, some of the places we hunt little, well, Utah every year, maybe Nevada a little bit more often, where the archery and muzzle hunts that are August 10th, September 10th, everybody you’re scouting is, is a hundred percent viable and useful information for those two hunts. That’s right. Because those bucks are in the pattern. They’re in velvet or just barely coming out of velvet by the muzz or season. And even there, you’ve gotta, usually a week or two before they really start changing. But now my experience has been you start getting late September, early October, that’s when bucks start acting. They’re like big bucks. That’s
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When they become smart that when they shed the velvet and they’re moving into October, they’re super smart. Toward the end of October, they kind of come dumb again. And by November 15th they’re really dumb. So anyway, you know, and, and when you’ve got a later season rifle hunt, generally speaking, the best time to scout the rutt is in the rutt right? Before, you know, and so, so close to the season. Yeah. Go in there three or four days. And, and I, and I did that on a, on a buck that I, I killed there by Eagle, the two 12 buck. I saw him pre-season and, and he stayed there. He was on a group of do, and he was happy and he felt like he was fulfilling his running needs right there. And so anyway, I ended up harvesting him within a hundred or 200 yards of where we had prec scouted him.
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And so anyway, the, the later hunts, you know, aren’t gonna do you as much good to go in and prec scout. But it is nice again, to go lay eyes on your unit when you’re talking to us biologists and other members of Epic, you can say, Hey, you know, I went into such and such, or I went up on such and such ridge and man, it looks like good winter range. And by the way, I’ve overlaid some, you know, traveling corridors that you can find on Colorado’s website for winter range stuff. And it looks like the these bucks are coming from here into here and how well do they really load up and does it take snow to move them or is it a date on a calendar where they move? And we see that even on the ponant here in Utah, sometimes it’s a date versus weather.
00:21:50:10 –> 00:22:49:02
That’s right. So just depending it, it depends. And I know that’s a very generic answer, but, but that’s the moral of that story. If you got a later season deer outcome, it’s more critical to just get familiar with your access glassing points where deer or elk will tend to gravitate to in the October November seasons after the RU than finding a specific bull. The other reason is you can’t get your heart set on a specific bucker bull. If you got a November late rifle elk hunt and you got archery loader rifle stuff ahead of, you could be dead, but, but no question he’s gonna move somewhere. So yeah. Anyway, but, but no scouting is as bad, but it’s just a different mindset. We tell a lot of guys, I tell a lot of clients myself, they want to come down, even clients. So maybe I’m booking or Jason’s taken to Nevada or somewhere that they wanna come see, and I just tell ’em, all right, just come down. You’re welcome to come through, come through, go out with us looking for sheep or do deer or whatever. But
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Don’t get disappointed when you don’t see
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Anything. Yeah, that’s right. It’s 105, 108 degrees. These sheep aren’t, aren’t moving much or the deer aren’t moving much. It’s a different timeframe. But I understand we all understand excitement after burning a bunch of points or getting lucky and drawn. You want to go set eyes on what you’re, what you’re hopefully there to hunt. You wait a long time.
00:23:08:15 –> 00:24:02:18
And that’s what I think this kind of tee, you know, ties into and a little bit of an outfitter plug. The nice thing about some of these tags is, is there’s outfitters out there that know it very well. And, and at times if you really want to capitalize on your tag and, and, and, and again, let’s quantify that capitalize meaning, you know, have the best chance at killing a trophy, then you might wanna hire an outfitter because he has, he has the, the, he knows, he, he has the conviction to hunt one specific area and hunt over and over and over for a specific buck, a specific bull. Or knowing like there’s places in Nevada that go, their seasons go till November 5th, he knows October 28th, those bucks are gonna start moving in. Now if you and I, Adam even, you know, you and I are out there and it’s a new unit for us, we don’t have that conviction. We’ve never seen it. And so we might end up getting nervous around October 25th, October
00:24:02:18 –> 00:24:05:00
20 start bouncing all over the place trying to find something. Yeah.
00:24:05:01 –> 00:24:06:00
And killing inferior your animal
00:24:06:00 –> 00:24:18:19
Instead of being content and knowing this is where I’ve been told over and over, this is where my guy’s taken me. We’ve killed bucks here three years in a row here at any, at any moment, there’s gonna be bucks trickling in here. That’s happens all the time in Nevada, in Colorado.
00:24:18:27 –> 00:24:36:19
And that’s where I think this member experience program comes in. You’ll get guys, and we find this ourselves, we, it’s, it’s really sad to draw the best tags of your life and never have been there. And when the season ends, if you could do it over again, you would kill something giant. Yeah. You learn, you learn it by the end as
00:24:36:19 –> 00:24:37:25
You go. As you go. Yeah.
00:24:38:02 –> 00:24:46:13
And, and so, and you and I have both have so many tags over the years, especially in the late nineties, mid to late nineties, if we could do Turnbacks and go back in time. Well, and
00:24:46:13 –> 00:24:47:05
Luckily we might kill
00:24:47:05 –> 00:24:47:10
Something,
00:24:47:16 –> 00:25:34:13
A couple of them we have, you know, and, and you do better the second time because this, all of this stuff we’re talking about is a layer of knowledge that you use the next time. And, and a lot of that happens on maybe our general season units here in Utah. I know some of your big deer, you, you didn’t kill ’em the first year you knew about ’em. No. Took a year or two and then boom, boom, you know, but, but that layer of information and building upon that in the areas that you can draw tags easy, easily enough to do that. That’s not always the case. Some places in Wyoming, you know, for deer or or Colorado for deer, you can draw it quite often. But if you’re drawing something, you know, if you don’t have the time to do what we’re talking about or you don’t have the time to commit to it, you just gotta weigh it out. Points are worth money, they’re worth landowner, tag equivalents, things like that. So one thing
00:25:34:13 –> 00:26:04:28
I wanted to kind of talk about, and it just, just like what you were saying as far as this information goes, we’ll go in and find areas that this burn is good or this chaining is good or whatever. You know, what we’re finding, a lot of times, at least I’m finding in some of my scouting, and you and I have talked about this, is these specific areas are good year after year after year. And I, and I don’t know why I’ve got, I’ve got plenty, lots of country that it does not produce, but the same 10 cameras every year have the 10 best bucks every year for the last 10
00:26:04:28 –> 00:26:25:17
Years. And you find that out. It’s just like, and it’s whether it be on a, on a unit that you’re glassing. ’cause there’s some units that have too much water to throw camera. Yeah. You, you, you just simply, I mean we’re not talking about Nevada and out of his dry, but there’s other places in Utah or Colorado that trail cameras are worthless. There’s too much water, there’s running water in every 500 yards from you. Yeah. But there’s always pockets or
00:26:25:17 –> 00:26:27:14
Maybe a feed thing or maybe it’s a pressure thing or Yep.
00:26:27:17 –> 00:26:35:16
But there’s places that you can always, if I go here, I’m gonna see a good deer. That’s it. And, and there’s only one way to find that out. And that’s to have, have experience being there
00:26:35:17 –> 00:27:10:13
And how, and being able to get tags year after year and you build upon that experience. There’s some places you, especially here in Utah, some of our Colorado units, we don’t, even these Colorado units that we’ve hunted multiple times, there’s places we, we don’t need to go in and prec scout, we know what the ruts gonna bring. We know where the migration’s gonna happen. We know our glassing knobs. Yeah. Same thing in Nevada. We got Utah. Some of these places that are our favorites, we, we could go in there and be successful 10 years from now. W with the exception if some major moonscape burn come through or something like that. And totally change the dynamic there.
00:27:10:17 –> 00:27:20:04
You get weather like we’ve had the last couple years in Colorado, that’s 75, 80 degrees and it’s not on part even close to average. And these deer could be
00:27:20:04 –> 00:27:20:22
Good luck to everybody.
00:27:20:27 –> 00:27:26:25
10 or 12,000 feet, still down to a few of them at seven or 8,000 feet and everywhere in between sprinkled. How
00:27:26:25 –> 00:27:29:16
About that four season hunt that you were hunting at 10,000? Yeah.
00:27:29:16 –> 00:27:34:05
Killed deer over 10,000 feet on, in, in 18th, 19th, 20th of November.
00:27:34:23 –> 00:27:35:11
Retarded. Yeah.
00:27:35:11 –> 00:27:40:24
Shouldn’t, shouldn’t be hunting there. No. You know, other years we’ve been there, there’s four or five feet of snow in that country. Yeah. I mean you
00:27:40:24 –> 00:27:42:14
Get a picture and if that happens, you know where
00:27:42:14 –> 00:28:49:01
To go. Yeah. Then you know where to go. So yeah, you do have to be able to react on your feet too with current weather conditions, whether it be drought in the case of early season deer out hunts, or in the case of, you know, early snows or lack thereof on late migration hunts. So maybe give a quick shout out to another one of our sponsors, Ken Attract Boots. Been with us from the start. Got a great new outsole product, the K 73 outsole on their new desert guide and mountain guide boots for 2018. The K 73 outsole combined, kind of their old k Talon outsole with this new, new one that they got great boots, been using the desert guides and mountain guides myself for a long, long time, depending if it’s early season or later season. And encourage you to give kenreck boots. Call or check ’em out on the web kenreck. K e n e t t r e k.com or 802 3 2 60 64. It’s that time of year. Get a new pair of boots, get ’em broke in used to what you’re gonna be putting ’em through before you need to actually put ’em on. And your hunts here. Good. Speaking about
00:28:49:01 –> 00:29:42:23
Putting boots on the ground and these guys are good guys. They’re hunters themselves and personal friends, so we appreciate them. You know, as we’re, as we’re talking about this stuff, I mean, it, it just gets me fired up and we keep, you know, we just, there’s so much to talk about and there’s so many facets to, to all this scouting. I don’t know what we, what we going into next, but I was almost thinking about, you know, when I first go into a unit, let’s just say I first go into a unit and, and Adam you can tell me what you think, but I like to cover the entire thing. I, I wanna go around it in the middle of it and everywhere a road will let me go. And I’m just basically, there’s just, just like, we kind of let off this podcast, we just need to get an overall feel. Feed burns, chainings, deer and elk. They like to feed. When you feed and sleep, you, you sleep where you’re safe and you feed where the feed is good. And so anyway, just to kind of get that general overfill of the unit. Yeah,
00:29:42:23 –> 00:29:54:25
That’s, you know, I guess just take last year for instance, I had a, an Arizona elk tag and my first day and a half down there, that’s all I did. I drove like a maniac burn to take her, take her to a gas through the whole unit down there. There a big
00:29:54:25 –> 00:29:56:02
Old Chevy probably burned two or three times.
00:29:56:08 –> 00:30:42:01
It might have. Yeah. But I just was wanting to see it, you know, you’d done everything on Google Earth and studying maps and talking to people. But that gave me a, I guess ground truth. Some of the stuff that I had sound found. And also, you know, you always have a few things that, boy, that looks different, better or worse, whatever than I thought it did from Google Earth. I get calls from hunters, you know, from time to time here at, at Epic Outdoors. And they’re asking about a unit that maybe Jason or I have personal knowledge having hunted before and you know, there we can, we can cut the, cut some corners for ’em. I’ve, I’ve talked to people saying, hey these areas in this certain, certain part of the range of found some ponds and waters, it looks like a great routing area. And I just fell out to ’em. There’s like no elk there. Yeah. I mean de despite what it looks like from Google. Yeah.
00:30:42:05 –> 00:30:43:12
But I of, I’m seeing elk right now,
00:30:43:23 –> 00:31:28:19
So Yeah. And I’m just like, there won’t be any of there. No, just, just save your time and move somewhere else. But, but yeah, I like the overview too. And then what that does after day, day and a half there, then I like to go back in and get a little bit more, put some boots on the ground, you know, hike, whether you lay cameras out or actually just get out on glass and then you’re trying to key in on the areas that you think this, everybody has their hunting style. Everybody likes a certain look of a mountain range or ridge, you know, you’re used to what you’re used to and you like what you like and everybody has different preferences and so you just gravitate to some of those. And if you’re not seeing any sign or anything like that and it is a season that you think you should be seeing stuff there and it’s gonna be indicative of what you’re gonna find August or September. You need to move, you need to adapt, you need to do something different. But that’s
00:31:28:19 –> 00:32:05:12
Exactly right. And what I liked about what you were saying as far as you’re, you’re covering that country and you’re seeing what looks good, part of what looks good to me, if I have an elk tag that’s an archery elk tag in the rutt, what looks good to me is rubs. And so the elk, when they, when they rutt and play and Naden Evans really grilled this into me. They make a lot of sign. They trash things. And so you can, you know, even in the season in the rutt obviously you can tell when, where, where elk are rutt, you know, especially if it’s a full moon or whatever and they’re doing it at night, maybe you’re not seeing as much activity as you think you should be. You can drive around and you can see where elk sign where, where the elk are rutting, wallowing.
00:32:06:03 –> 00:32:36:28
Of course wallowing generally is a little bit earlier in that those early archery hunts. But, and then just spending time chasing cows rubbing and the trees that are just trash and you know, that’s another thing you can look at in the summer. Generally we like to say you can’t scout the rut except for in the rut. But times Adam, we’re keeping track mentally even on these deer units of where we’re seeing rubs, even deer rubs. That’s telling you rutt, I mean that’s telling you November hunts for deer. That’s right. Elk rubs. That’s September for elk. And so there’s just a lot of tracks in sign. That’s right.
00:32:36:29 –> 00:33:02:06
Well that’s, that’s a good tip. Just, just simply because I mean they rub elk will rub trees, you know, out of boredom throughout the year, but they go to town day after day during that they rub a two, three week period in, in September. So if you’re seeing a lot of year old rubs in an area, it’s got water and it’s got a lot of sign, maybe not a lot of elk center right there. Right. Then when you’re there, you know, it may, it may change here during the rutt. So keep that in mind.
00:33:02:25 –> 00:33:41:02
I’d like to talk about maybe just a quick experience and maybe it’ll spur, spur on, you know, some thought and, and and a few tactics here. And then also I know you talked to a sheep hunter that talked about, you know, when to do what to do in regards to a sheep hunt. But I did talk to a member he was gonna hunt Colorado, a high country in a, in a unit for elk. And he says, you know, I know you’ve killed a few bulls, you know a few good bulls and I’m just kind of wondering, I want to just bounce a few ideas off you. And he says, so let’s just say like, you know, he was in particular, let’s call it unit A, he’s in unit A and he says, I mean how do I know that one grassy hillside’s not as good as another grassy hillside?
00:33:41:03 –> 00:34:10:22
How do I know all of these things? And I said, yeah, you know, you’re not gonna know until you go in Google Earth’s just gonna show, show that it’s grassy hillsides. But you can always tell when you go in you’re gonna see sign. I said, if you’re sitting down and you’re starting to glass and you don’t have any elk tracks around you, you should move. You know what I mean? Because elk do make a lot of tracks and stuff. And so I think one of the things you just don’t know how pressure’s gonna affect elk. You don’t know how predators or, or whatever it may be. It may be water drying
00:34:10:28 –> 00:34:27:22
Hikers. You get non consumptive people in some of these high country Colorado units, they don’t affect maybe the goats and yeah. Sheep as much. ’cause those, those animals tend to get a little bit more habituated to ’em and they’ll stand around and take an arrow from you at 40 yards ’cause they think you’re a backpacker. You know? And elk is not gonna do that. So,
00:34:27:22 –> 00:34:59:06
So if I’m during a season, if we’re during a season and we’re not seeing something for like let’s say we backpack in, we’re going in for a night in the morning, generally a night in the morning. If there, if you’re not seeing stuff and a night in the morning you move you, you don’t take waste another entire day, you know, on something that’s not working. You move my, my I’m the opinion, you move and you move midday when there’s not a lot of things moving and there’s not a lot else other things to go. You never waste a night or a morning moving you, you’re glass at night or morning you’re hunting or scouting
00:34:59:11 –> 00:35:01:17
Move during the middle of the night or the middle of the day. That’s
00:35:01:17 –> 00:35:13:08
Right. And, and don’t be afraid to move, move and get after it. And then that’s when I might use Google Earth and say, oh geez, I’d be best off to backpack myself outta here and come around to a different trailhead and access some of this different country. Do
00:35:13:15 –> 00:35:29:04
That during the night and drive, be at daylight the next morning doing that. Yeah. You know, when it comes to deer, I guess a couple of things that I’ve learned though, whether it be in Utah or anywhere else, is if you see a good deer and I mean a real good deer, like an all-in deer, let’s
00:35:29:04 –> 00:35:31:04
Call it a just book. Both ways. Just
00:35:31:05 –> 00:35:35:10
Yeah. Anything. Yeah. Or or something 30 inches smaller than that. Alright.
00:35:36:11 –> 00:35:38:16
We’re talking just a big deer, just
00:35:38:16 –> 00:35:40:00
A 200 inch insure, you know, a deer, five and a half,
00:35:40:07 –> 00:35:40:13
Six
00:35:40:13 –> 00:35:54:11
And a half year old deer’s got all your attention and you see it. And, and again you have an earlier season hunt where you think that that deer where he is living is where he is gonna live. And you go back and you don’t see him. Do you go up, don’t, don’t move like what we’re talking about here. Alright. It’s
00:35:54:11 –> 00:35:56:00
A good point. I’m talking about generality.
00:35:56:00 –> 00:37:02:25
You’re talking about move learning a country for the first time and picking up signs or you don’t have a specific animal, you’re after picking track. Yep. But when you find something, especially like a deer where they have a lot smaller home range, you know, elk, elk will move. You know, you find an elk in July and August, you better kill him right off the bat. Or who knows where that thing’s gonna be. A deer’s a different story. So don’t give up. I’ve been, I I’ve had specific deer that we’ve found or killed with people on limited draw units or, or that here in Utah and you find them and it’s taken me five trips back looking for the same deer and then he just steps out of the timber. I knew it was probably in a thicker spot. It’s gonna be prone to that. And so the visibility and how well you can see in glass always, always plays into how much I really stay in an area. But I always usually, I ne I’ve had the things creep into my mind that, oh, maybe a lion killed them. Maybe I’m looking for something that’s not here. But I usually, that that happens on occasion. We all have heard of that and seen it happen. It’s not, and things like that. It’s not, it’s not fun. Nobody appreciates it. But I don’t, until I find a carcass, I don’t give up. Yeah. You know,
00:37:03:01 –> 00:37:44:29
The one thing, and I think that’s a hundred percent true, especially during the season. The one thing I did have a guy ask me the other day says, let’s say you find a giant and you know it’s July 1st or July 15th or whatever, and you can tell he is gonna be a giant, obviously they’re growing. Do you stay on him? Do you check on him every week? Do you check on him every other day? And I’m like, no, I pretend I don’t care if that deer’s 220 inches, 200 inches, one 90, whatever it is. I pretend there’s a bigger deer in the unit and I don’t quit. Now I, and I assume, especially if I have an early season hunt, I assume he’s alive and well. And I’m not gonna keep checking on him. I wanna kind of check on him and sometimes I will to see how he turned out. But I am moving. I’ve got one in my back pocket, so to speak.
00:37:44:29 –> 00:37:45:23
Exactly. And
00:37:45:23 –> 00:37:49:24
I’m moving. I’m gonna find 15 of ’em if I can. ’cause you might need 15 backup plans.
00:37:49:25 –> 00:37:50:10
Yeah. What happens
00:37:51:02 –> 00:37:51:11
Are hard
00:37:51:11 –> 00:38:30:01
To hunt. Yeah. What happens opening day when when you blow him? Yeah. Or another hunter knew about him and they, he gets pushed hard. And his 15 cousins, I mean, who knows. And you’re realize, all right, my deer is no secret. I need a plan B and C buck. And so couldn’t be said better than that. Don’t don’t, there’s some deer that you find that, you know, this is the deer I’m hunting. Yeah. But keep looking for a plan B or C. That’s right. Because you always are gonna have to have something like that. And, and, and we’re not saying you give up on B or C if it doesn’t show up the first or second day of the hunt. No. But if things go way south and the, the orange army shows up or the foot soldier army shows
00:38:30:01 –> 00:38:36:12
Up, let’s say the fire runs through there. Yeah. It’s January or July 20th. Yeah. Or whatever. Yeah. You don’t, you don’t know he’s gonna be displaced.
00:38:36:16 –> 00:38:41:13
Yep. It’s always better to have more options than one option. That’s probably the, just the moral that, and
00:38:41:13 –> 00:39:21:02
I think part of this too is we get hunting these same areas and, and, and guys get to be, this is my camp. I camp here and we’ve done this for 20 years and this is our family tradition and we hunt this hill and we hunt this mountain and we hike this and this is always good. And, and they get into a rutt. And I like to, I like to, every in, in my mind, the entire unit is, is my playground. I’m gonna, I’m willing to hunt on one end or the other end depending. And I don’t, and I don’t discount areas just because I like the way this looks. I, it doesn’t matter. Deer don’t care if I like what, what looks good. They care what they think looks good, what they feel comfortable in, what they feel safe in and what they like to feed on.
00:39:21:17 –> 00:39:35:10
That’s right. No question. They’re they’re habitual. Much more habitual tied to it. Even year to year elk, a lot of times they’ll live on a different mountain range from year to year. Yeah. A bull specific bull. I mean it just, they’re not quite like deer. Same.
00:39:35:10 –> 00:40:05:26
Yeah. And some of these elk, we’ll find, you know, guys are prec scout and elk. And even from July through September to illustrate some of this movement, we’ve had bulls go from Utah to Nevada and get killed in Nevada. And you know, guys kind of had him in their back pocket, so to speak, but elk are never in your back pocket. You know, it’d be like hunting deer as they migrate to November, you know, about something in the summer range. And, and he’s not in your back pocket unless you really know where he migrates to. And they, we do find that, that they will rutt in generally the same geo geographical case.
00:40:05:26 –> 00:40:44:11
Yeah. You find that you find a shed or something like that on a winter range of a buck or something in late February, early March. Okay. And you have a later season deer tag that at least lets you know, this part of the unit that deer goes to to call winter. You know? And so there’s been a lot of big deer killed like on the Ponson and other places like that where guy will find a shed of a buck sheds kill buck and the next year they know, all right, that’s at least the direction that thing’s going. Whether he gets all the way to where he is, shed before, you know, October, end of October hits in the hunt. But it’s all predicated on the season you have. And so if you, if you ever have questions like that, you can call Jason or Ryan just in terms of, Hey, I’ve got this tag.
00:40:44:19 –> 00:41:18:20
What what do you, yeah. What do you think’s worthwhile doing ahead of time? Or what kind of things should I be looking for? ’cause we realize we’re talking to ourselves here in this, in this room here that maybe have grown up on the west and hunted deer and elk our whole lives. But we realize that if you’ve hunt a white toe your whole lives and you’re from, you know, Kentucky and you’re, you’re wanting to hunt mule deer and you love hunting on your own, love the satisfaction that comes with that. You realize there’s just a lot of natural questions. Just like Jason and I would have, we would say, Hey, we’re, we’re looking for some white toe property in Kentucky on there. You know, what are we looking for Kentucky? Yeah. Where’s that? Oh yeah, I mean, yeah, exactly.
00:41:19:16 –> 00:41:57:29
So, well I’m gonna have to get a map or I don’t know, I guess I’d start with a map. So anyway, I just think, and, and, and while we’re, we’re starting to talk about this a little bit, but just don’t be scared to try. It’s your hunt. Nobody, nobody’s gonna be judging you unless you care about what people are thinking and saying about you. And you shouldn’t be doing that anyway. Don’t be scared to try get out there and make it happen. It’s some of these guys, they’re scared of failure. They don’t want to feel dumb and ask us dumb questions and no question is a dumb question. Just like me and Whitetails and I don’t really like talking about whitetails ’cause they’re not my wheelhouse and I know nothing about ’em. That’s
00:41:57:29 –> 00:42:14:06
Right. I know nothing about ’em. We’re might, as we be talking about hunting, you know, wolverines or Narwals or something like the people in the narwhal, remember Jim Win was talking about the people in none hunting seals and narwals up there. None of it, you know. And I’m like, okay, I wonder how you’d kill one of those. You,
00:42:14:16 –> 00:42:15:02
I just, ’em
00:42:15:07 –> 00:42:18:26
They live under six feet of ice and they have a blowhole now and then
00:42:19:00 –> 00:42:19:18
Tannerite.
00:42:20:29 –> 00:43:04:04
That’s what I’d be first thing. Eighties and Tam. So anyway, yeah. I just think, anyway, don’t be scared to try you, you, you might waste a tag or two here and there. We’ve got a whole drawer full of tags, wazoo awesome tags that took 10 plus points that we’ve eaten. And so, and it’s just, it’s just a matter of going out and doing it and learning as much as you can and, and thinking all the time. We, one thing I think, Adam, that we take for granted is because we live it, we, and we don’t think about it a lot when we’re away from our house and we’re out there doing it. We never quit thinking there’s Rams, you’ve lost and you found five miles away. Yeah. Seven miles away. And you found him because you didn’t quit thinking. Yeah. And you’re, you’re, when we’re sitting there having lunch, we’re thinking if he’s not
00:43:04:04 –> 00:43:05:24
Here, where’s he at? Where’s
00:43:05:25 –> 00:43:07:06
He at? Where, what am I’m gonna try.
00:43:07:12 –> 00:43:57:26
Yeah. If you, me may remember, I mean, you talk to a lot of different people. Remember the podcast with Jake Franklin. He had a big Graham Goliath. There was something with Jason Harrison last year. He, they had exhausted and they just started, he started thinking out of the box where could they be? He knew they had some weird monsoon reigns that went through an area, found a little bit of a greenup, a bunch of quill. He’s like, all right. Started, we’re gonna a glass an area, never have. And like you said, found some barrel cactus broke open. And there’s only one thing that does that in the California desert. So just, there’s no, there’s no substitution for trying. And we’ve failed way more times than we’ve succeeded. But that hopefully allows us to succeed more now in, in our hunting careers because we know, all right, what, what doesn’t work or what wasn’t enough effort? What, what taught me a lesson? And there’s no substitute for just being taught lessons, good or bad. So, and
00:43:57:26 –> 00:45:02:12
So another thing I just think like, just working hard during your hunt. So let’s say you’re, you’re right in the middle of your hunt. There’s not a lot going on in the middle of the day. If you’re not moving to new country, you, you should be, there’s a couple of things. You know, we run, we run truck cameras during the season if we can. It’s not gonna be legal in Nevada anymore, but like elk and in Utah, we’re running ’em in during the season. These bulls, remember we talked about ’em moving into rut. They move in with different cows. Maybe they’re establishing a pecking order. Some bulls get run off and they pick up a new group of cows checking these cameras every day, check ’em every single day. There’s nothing else going on. And it might be 80 or 90 degrees, and they’ve got a water in the middle of the day in September, especially in some of these lower lying units. And so these, the, it’s a what else is going on? Learn country, learn where these elk are and, and when they start coming into water, I killed a bull that came in for the first time September 23rd. And, and who knows where he was prior to that. He’s probably rot a cow three miles away. And I didn’t know it. And then, and he came in and he stuck there and I killed him. And it’s because we were checking cameras in the middle of the day. That’s
00:45:02:12 –> 00:45:50:22
Right. Another, I mean, we can’t, I guess, talk about scouting without, we’ve mentioned glassing a little bit just in terms of throwing out glassing, but really need to impress. I mean, trail cameras are tools and certain places they’re very effective. Other places they’re not at all. They’re not, not at all. They’re not, I don’t even use ’em. And certain places because there’s either too much water or the animals just don’t depend on, you know, too tight of a place like that. You can get a, get a pitcher. A lot of sheep areas in, in Utah or for instance, they’re just not, not that way by the best glass you can afford. Obviously not all hunts, archery elk hunt’s in the rutt generally isn’t probably gonna need it and need as much of an investment in, you know, 15 power mounted on tripod and, and highest spot in scope you need.
00:45:51:02 –> 00:46:51:04
But when it comes to hunting mule deer or sheep, absolutely it’s going to, because they don’t scream and make noise like elk do in the rutt. Now, if you’re gonna hunt late season elk, no question opt, it’s become a big deal. And a lot of the seasons in the around the west are late October, November. And you’re talking about bulls that are worn out, they’re tired, they’re not moving a lot. In some states, I mean, in certain places like Wyoming and Montana, other places they can migrate long, long distances. But in other places in our mountain ranges in Utah and Nevada, it’s just a little bit of an elevational shift and they’re tucked away in pockets in thick timber and it’s sitting on your butt all day long. And so you gotta have great glass. I mean we’ve, Jason and I, for whatever reason, but we’ve never had a reason to change. We’ve been, we’ve used Swarovski our, pretty much our whole life. Yeah. 15 power mount of mounted tripod binoculars. I, I, there’s been a lot of hunts that I don’t even pack spotting scope and I would trade the would never trade those fifteens. And when you’re looking for one specific deer, I
00:46:51:04 –> 00:46:51:25
Love fifteens.
00:46:51:29 –> 00:47:41:07
Yeah, you, and you know, you’re gonna recognize that deer the instant he steps outta the brush at a thousand or 1500 yards. You don’t need any scope, but you need to tear stuff apart with your fifteens. So impress that upon your, your minds. I mean, there’s a lot of techniques we can get into glassing and that’s probably just for another podcast or something like that. Everybody has their own personal, you know, methods for that. But, but have the best glass that you can find. A lot of these units, even in Colorado third season, you think they’re just gonna be standing around ru running with the doze. But a lot of times they’re in the, they’re in the standing quakes or spruce for timber and you’re sitting on the hillside all day long waiting for that white, white butt patch, you know, to face you the right way in the timber or you know, pick up a buck that’s coming down outta the high country and he’s betted in there. Whatever you just, you need the best option objects you can have. So,
00:47:41:08 –> 00:48:48:28
And if that’s, and, and if that’s vortex or Zeiss or whatever it is, Zeiss does make a great pair of fifteens. I know vortex come, come out with an 18 power, some phenomenal optics by the way, Kent’s optics, we work with them. We’ll put, throw a little plug out for those guys. They’re intense hunters kill some amazing animals and they sell a lot of different brands of optics from, nor from night forest to Vortex, Swarovski and Zes, whatever. And they’ve got an incredible inventory. Super good guys just to visit with about hunting experience as well. They kind of have a fetish for giant antelope. I don’t quite understand it, but they do. And they kill a lot of book heads. They’re responsible for a lot of buckheads hitting the ground, deer, elk and antelope. And so super good guys. Give them a holler if you need anything. They sell tripods and all kinds of different gear, but it’d be kents optics.com 4 3 5 2 5 7 7 0 1 4. David Harrow, his brother’s super good guys. So anyway, we’ve covered a lot of stuff. Is there anything, I know there’s, we’re missing a ton, Adam, can you think of anything we should be talking about specific?
00:48:52:25 –> 00:49:07:10
I know we talked some, we’ve got some questions about, about wind, you know, and the difference of hunting animals and maybe we’ll call lower elevations, five to 8,000 feet. Even though a lot of you, sea level people might think 8,000 feet’s high US westerners
00:49:07:14 –> 00:49:08:16
Brain cells at 8,000,
00:49:08:20 –> 00:49:57:18
That five to 8,000 we would call the low to mid-range. And then you get the 10 to 12,000 foot high country stuff. And how, how wind plays a different role and, and it’s not just a role in, you know, if you got a bow and you’re, you’re trying to stalk an animal and keep the wind in your face, it’s a lot of times trying to, whether you’re hunting spring black bears, they have incredible noises and you’re trying to glass a canyon, you, you gotta be paying attention to that. You gotta be just the prevailing winds. And I know we’re talking about stuff that’s sounds very basic, but it, but it changes with altitude and it doesn’t stay as, as constant at higher altitude either. You get a lot more convectional, current swirling and different things like that. I think the, the old, I can’t call it old, I guess the podcast we did last year, perhaps that’s not too old No.
00:49:57:18 –> 00:50:52:02
With Randy Omer, he talked about that. How he, he, he has a different approach from when he is hunting in Nevada versus when he is hunting the high country of Colorado hunting deer because of when does, when usually it’ll stabilize in these higher, higher deserts of Utah, Nevada quicker in the day as you get that prevailing generally south wind versus Colorado or anywhere in the high country, Wyoming, Montana, the high country where you get a lot of thermal building or cloud building and, and it creates its own weather and it can cause problems. So there’s not a, just bear that in mind I guess before you make your decide to go all in and stock something sheep go Billy or, or a ram or whatever you’re after, a big buck under a cliff ledge, depending on where you’re hunting, you may don’t, don’t rush in there. We’re, I’m generally a very patient guy when it comes to that. Especially when you’re hunting one animal. If you’re hunting just, just deer, just, just go for it.
00:50:52:21 –> 00:50:53:11
Yeah. And if you’re,
00:50:53:11 –> 00:50:56:23
If you’re hunting one deer, you, you try to, you try to make it count. And if
00:50:56:23 –> 00:51:19:02
You’re glassing 360 degrees, wind doesn’t, you don’t know where the buck is. You don’t know what you’re looking for. You know, if, if you’re just scouting and you don’t have a specific buck you’re onto and you don’t know where he likes to bed, you know. But a lot of times just one little tip, and I know we’re not talking about g glassing much. One little tip. A lot of guys don’t like to glass in the sun. I don’t like glassing into the sun. But when you glass into the sun, you’re looking at the
00:51:19:02 –> 00:51:26:22
Shaded into the shaded site, it’s the hardest thing to do. ’cause it’s GW squinting. You have your hat over your eye. That’s right. Or your optic, you got glare. That’s,
00:51:26:26 –> 00:52:09:23
I was listening to a podcast. I listen to a lot of podcasts ’cause they’re addicting, including ours. And anyway, they were talking about they don’t glass into the sun, you glass, you, you choose to have the the sun to your back and, and they do glow and it, and right when the sun first hits everything, everything glows and it is nice to have the sun to your back. But in, in places that we’re going, a lot of times those deer will let the sun hit ’em for five to 10 minutes and then they’re headed shade. And so anyway, just, you know, if you set up for an evening glass, glass of the sun, that buck’s sitting, been sitting there in the shade for the last two to three hours. And so anyway, you might not be right. Have the sun on you, you might kick off to the side of a tree or do whatever you can to get into that shade. But it is gonna be a little white in there. Yeah. You’re gonna be having sun raised
00:52:09:24 –> 00:52:45:18
Generally different for sheep and goats and things like that, that don’t, that don’t, don’t care. Have an aversion to it as much. They’re on their feet up and down a lot more throughout the day. But when it comes to, to elk or deer, but it’s both a thermal thing and it’s just as seclusive, I think they know, they know when they’re popping out like a Christmas light. Yeah, they know it. And if you watch enough big deer live on the shady north, north facing slopes, or whether it be the east or or west facing slopes on either morning or night, you’ll, you’ll realize that an older deer or an older bull picks up on that and they, they like it. That’s an added level of security for ’em. So
00:52:45:25 –> 00:53:34:28
That’s it. I think we, we could obviously talk about some more mapping and with your phone and, and your g p s and some of these chips that are available and whatnot. Just know that we are huge fans of that. You should for maps and, and you know, get your paper maps right now. But Google Earth and your g p s chips are, are, are amazing tools and, and anyway, so, so do that. Call us. We have the Member draw experience program. We’re obviously gonna put you in that program as well. And then you’ll be able to help the next guy and that’s a, that’s a service a, a member benefit for the a hundred dollars a year you spend with us to get the nine issues a year. That’s, that’s heavily detailed in all the research part of our magazine as well as, you know, to partaking in this member draw experience program. It’s thousands and thousands and thousands of entries in there and guys that are willing to help you out as long as you’re willing to help the next guy.
00:53:35:03 –> 00:54:22:18
That’s right. So take advantage of that. We’re here, it’s that time of year when most of the drawings are, are all taking place. There’s a few states left, Idaho deer, elk, antelope and what Arizona deer and sheep. That’s about it for the most part. So if you find yourself with, with a tag or two that you want to try to help put something together with, use the, use the Epic member experience database Chase and talked about or give us a call or, or you know, some of the other things we talked about today. It’s also the time of year. We’ve talked about several pieces of gear that we don’t live without, you know, here in our, in our podcast. And, and it’s the time of year where good gear you should be on top of it. A lot of places, if you’re shopping retail in different places, as you get the week before your hunt, you’re gonna have a hard time finding the sizes and things like that in.
00:54:22:19 –> 00:55:04:19
So encourage you to get your gear early, whether it’s boots, whether it’s camo, whether it’s new rifles, bows, guns, whatever, tents, things like that. So give a quick shout out to Hillberg. I know we’ve, we’ve loved our hillberg tents, you know, whether it be single man, two man, depending on the type of hunt we use. They’ve got something for everything. Whether you got a late season hunt, huge variety of, of applications for their tents. It’s group hunts, individual hunts, things like that. Hillberg, h i l l e b e r g hillberg.com as well as check ’em out online and love their tents. Great products, four season tents for the most part. So
00:55:04:19 –> 00:55:43:20
They are, they’re awesome. Okay, well that wraps it up. I think we pretty well covered it. There’s obviously a lot more questions out there and feel free to call Adam and Iron. Maybe we might even talk about how long we glass and when we move and, and, and a lot of different little dive into some of these little things. But, and we may even do a question and answer podcast. Maybe we do some kind of a, a live feed somehow. I don’t even know how to spell live. I don’t know. All I know is I just start scrolling through my phone on Instagram and Facebook and I don’t even know how that stuff gets there. But we might do something with the help of Chris and somebody else that’s more savvy, you know, with this new age stuff than I am. So anyway, maybe we’ll do a question and answer and kind of dive into a few of these things.
00:55:44:05 –> 00:56:27:02
Again, there’s a lot of different techniques that work just, just because we do something a little different than the next guy doesn’t mean he’s gonna be unsuccessful. There’s a lot of, lot of techniques that work and so anyway, appreciate all you guys out there. Feel free to give us a holler. I think one, one of the biggest keys I can leave you with is don’t be scared to fail. Get out there and make it happen. Don’t be scared to fail, just do it. You gotta start somewhere. We eat tags, they don’t taste good, but we’re all gonna eat ’em. That’s, that’s part of doing business within the hunting industry and I call it a business ’cause you’re spending a lot of money and there’s a lot of investment there. So anyway, it’s just part of the game. Learn how to eat tags and not be scared of it and, and you’ll do well and you get a lot of satisfaction out of enjoying these tags.
00:56:27:09 –> 00:57:09:04
That’s right. If you want, you can obviously give us a call, shoot us an email if you want to send some ideas or some talking points for a podcast q and a podcast. We did one a few months ago. Hopefully it was beneficial. If you guys like it, you had some great questions submitted to us. If you wanna submit something to us, you can send it to Chris, c h r i [email protected]. We’ll put something together here in the next maybe month or something that can hopefully be used tailored to scouting or hunting tactics, specifically with some of the hunts here looming here in the next month or two. So Chris, at epic outdoors.com or if you happen to call in for some other reason, get an Epic member experience database or something like that, you can give us a, give us an idea, we’ll pencil that down as well. And
00:57:09:04 –> 00:57:55:20
We’re lined up to do five podcasts this week. I just want you to know you can guarantee yourself new content. You wake up Friday morning and check out the Epic Outdoors Podcast. We load content for sure every Thursday. Now sometimes Chris makes it 11:59 PM on Thursday. But Friday morning you know you’re gonna be sure you’re gonna have new content. And if not, we do once in a while we’ll put out a couple, couple a week. But anyway, we’re cranking ’em out like it’s our job. Everybody get out there, find a big deer, find a big elk, big ram. These same tactics can be used on moose or goat or anything. But heck, if you have any questions, give us a holler. We’re happy to help. In and around our own scouting, we will be closing the office on Fridays. It’s just time. It’s that time of year. So let’s get out there and find something boys.
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